Good day, Comrades. Welcome to the United Soviet States of America.
His Transparency’s campaign promise to transform America, in part through health care “reform”, is our sickening reality after the Senate passed the “fixes” to their legislation demanded by the House, and the House in turn passed the Senate’s version of their demands, despite total opposition from Republicans and a number of Democrats.
Veep Biden commemorated the historic moment of the bill becoming law with the sound-bite of the day, “”This is a big f#@%*!g deal,” earning praise from his handlers and indulgent smiles from the left wingnuts.
Mr. Obama couldn’t resist ribbing his deputy, Biden said, telling those attending his morning briefing, “You know what the best thing about yesterday was? Joe’s comment.”
Biden said he quipped, “If you thought it was so good, why didn’t you say it?”
Apparently, Mr. Obama’s Press Secretary was equally impressed by the Vice President’s ability to articulate the momentousness of the occasion. Gibbs tweeted: “And yes Mr. Vice President, you’re right…”
Certainly Congress giving the federal government control over a full fifth of the private sector and of American citizens is cause for such silly celebrations. It’s taken the progressives 100 years of plotting and scheming and slowly twisting the intentions inherent in the basic, good and moral nature of the average American citizen to coerce them to submit to the ideology of spreading the wealth, as was so clearly stated by Michigan Representative John Dingell (D) the other day: “Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”
Yet even though the pigs are busy taking flight today, seems they are headed straight for the Democrat’s giddy poke in the form of taxes, both direct and indirect.
- Turns out that some kids with pre-existing conditions will have to wait. Another four years. The iron-clad guarantee of coverage for everyone with pre-existing conditions won’t kick in until then. Notes the Associated Press: “Full protection for children would not come until 2014, said Kate Cyrul, a spokeswoman for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee…. That’s the same year when insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to any person on account of health problems.”
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No one is safe from the tax increases baked into the legislation. Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) admitted: “One other point that I think it’s very important to make is that it is true that in certain cases, the taxes will go up for some Americans who might be making less than $200,000.”
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There is no relief in sight for the jobless, who are going find more company in the unemployment line as the largest private corporations are forced to pay more in taxes. Caterpillar said it would cost the company at least $100 million more in the first year alone. Medical device maker Medtronic warned that new taxes on its products could force it to lay off a thousand workers. Now Verizon joins the roll of businesses staring at adverse consequences and AT&T has announced that retiree benefits will be impacted. And don’t expect a expansion of small businesses since it looks quite likely that staying small and on the federal dole (meaning, every taxpaying American is paying for it) will be the preferred choice to keep small business costs from skyrocketing.
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There’s a requirement that businesses include the value of the health care benefits they provide to employees on W-2s, beginning with W-2s for 2011.
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Make no mistake, no matter what your income, you’ll pay double the penalty for nonqualified distributions from health savings accounts, to 20%, beginning in 2011.
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No matter how much you make, there’s a limit on the amount that employees can contribute to health care flexible spending accounts. A meager $2,500 a year.
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A ban on using funds from flexible spending accounts, health reimbursement arrangements or health savings accounts for the cost of over-the-counter medications goes into effect starting in 2011.
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Take a hike. The floor goes up from 7.5% on itemized deductions for medical expenses to 10%, beginning in 2013. (Those age 65 and over are exempt from the cutback, but only through 2016.)
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Even though the excise taxes for “Cadillac plans” will be directly paid by the insurance company, economists of all persuasions expect those costs to be passed along to policyholders. Meaning, your premium is going to go up.
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Expect your cost to go up to pay a big portion of the numerous fees that the health care bill will impose on the pharmaceutical industry ($27 billion from 2011 through 2019), on medical-device manufacturers ($20 billion from 2013 through 2019) and on health insurance providers ($60.1 billion from 2014 through 2019), and on indoor tanning services (a 10 percent excise tax).
But hey, Hugo Chavez is happy now. Felididades! He calls it “a miracle” that represented a major “success” for His Transparency. Above all, what Castro found “really incredible” was that it had taken the United States “234 years” to pass such legislation, “something that Cuba was able to do half a century ago.”
Now while all of this is going on, perhaps one of the biggest pigs of all is about to come flying in. This year, the system will pay out more in Social Security benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Oops.
Feeling a little sick? You have an appointment scheduled. On November 2nd.